By Jan Hennop and Matthew Walsh Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth is the headline speaker at Asia’s premier defence summit opening Friday, but China’s top officials aren’t expected despite weighty questions like Taiwan and the war in Iran. Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun speaks during the 21st Shangri-La Dialogue summit at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore on June 2, 2024. Photo: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, via Flickr. Beijing’s defence minister is to skip the three-day Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore for the second year running, which analysts viewed as a sign of China’s rising power.
Yet, the forum that brings together top officials from around 45 nations has historically provided a setting for debate as well as quiet and high-profile diplomacy.
Defence Minister Dong Jun’s absence means no meeting there with Hegseth as China warns the US over its involvement with Taiwan and Washington seeks an end to the Mideast war.
The Middle East was the source of 57 percent of China’s direct seaborne crude imports in 2025 — 5.9 million barrels per day (mbd) — maritime tracking firm Kpler said.
Hegseth’s second trip to the Shangri-La Dialogue comes after US President Donald Trump’s visit to China in May, and his subsequent suggestion that US arms sales to Taiwan could be used as a bargaining chip with Beijing. See also: China is ‘preparing’ to use military force in Asia, US says Hegseth’s speech on Saturday is expected to be “quite strong against China, but mainly for internal (US) consumption”, said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.
“I think under Trump anything is negotiable and even with enemies deals can be done… (even) with Taiwan as a negotiating chip,” Oh told AFP. Trump said “fantastic” trade deals were struck after his visit to China, although details were vague and no breakthrough with Beijing emerged in the war with Iran.
China arrived as ‘major power’
As the US and Iran clashed again on Thursday, threatening to derail a fragile push for peace, it “is unlikely that any possible deal will be discussed at the Shangri-La Dialogue”, Oh said.
China sent Dong to the dialogue as recently as 2024, where he and then Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin met for their first substantive face-to-face talks in 18 months.
“Dong was absent last year, reportedly due to China’s reluctance to engage with… Hegseth,” said William Choong, principal fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute think-tank. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (centre) arrives for a bilateral meeting with Singapore’s Minister for Defence Chan Chun Sing on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on May 29, 2026. Photo: Jam Sta Rosa/AFP. China said Thursday it would send experts and scholars from its army’s study institutions.
Major General Meng Xiangqing of the National Defense University will lead the delegation, which is to include scholars from the National Defense University, the Academy of Military Sciences and the Navy.
Two other former defence ministers Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu previously spoke at Shangri-La. Both were subsequently handed suspended death sentences on graft charges , analysts point out.
“It’s kind of a poisoned chalice for any Chinese defence minister to speak out publicly,” said Jennifer Parker, adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia’s Defence and Security Institute.
With Dong again not attending, one of the reasons seemed obvious, said Choong, writing for the Lowy Institute think-tank.
“For one thing, China has truly arrived as a major power in the region, so it does not really need to send its defence minister to brave a fusillade of questions and try to ‘score’ brownie points,” he said.
Beijing, however, like last year, risked not having a senior leader present if the two most pertinent global security issues — Taiwan and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz — do come up.
“At a time when perceptions of US leadership are falling, Beijing could soothe some jangled nerves in the region by reassuring delegates that it would use force against the island only as a last resort,” Choong said.
AUKUS focus
The defence ministers of the United States, Britain and Australia — the members of the AUKUS security alliance — are also due to convene. Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles (right) and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth meet on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur on November 1, 2025. File photo: Richard Marles, via X. AUKUS’s stated goal is to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region, though it is widely seen as a bulwark against a rising China, which strongly opposes the pact.
Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Friday that Canberra was seeking “the maintenance of the global rules-based order” in the region.
“We’ve seen China engage in a very significant military buildup… and it has not happened with the kind of strategic reassurance which (we) would expect,” he told journalists at the forum.
“Fundamentally, we want to have a productive relationship with China. We want to live in a world which is governed by rules.”
Australian media outlets have reported, citing unnamed sources, that the AUKUS nations are expected to announce a major project, perhaps involving uncrewed underwater vehicles.